The Stone Sky

by N. K. Jemisin

  I’m sorry, Essun. I’m so sorry. Goodbye.

  Nassun gasps, her eyes snapping open as she feels your pressure upon the Gate—upon her, while you dragged all of the terrible transforming curls of magic toward yourself—suddenly relax. The onyx pauses in its onslaught, shimmering in tandem with the dozens of obelisks it has claimed; it is full of power that must, must be expended. For the moment, however, it holds. The stabilizing magics finally settle the churning ocean around Corepoint. For this one, pent moment, the world waits, still and taut.

  She turns.

  “Nassun,” you say. It’s a whisper. You’re on the bottom steps of the pylon, trying to reach her, but that won’t be happening. Your arm has completely solidified, and your torso is going. Your stone foot slides uselessly on the slick material, then locks as the rest of your leg freezes up. With your good foot, you can still push, but the stone of you is heavy; as crawling goes, you’re not doing a very good job of it.

  Her brow furrows. You look up at her, and it strikes you. Your little girl. So big, here beneath the onyx and the Moon. So powerful. So beautiful. And you cannot help it: You burst into tears at the sight of her. You laugh, though one of your lungs has gone to stone and it’s only a soft wheeze instead. So rusting amazing, your little girl. You are proud to lose to her strength.

  She inhales, her eyes widening as if she cannot believe what she is seeing: her mother, so fearsome, on the ground. Trying to crawl on stone limbs. Face wet with tears. Smiling. You have never, ever smiled at her before.

  And then the line of transformation moves over your face, and you are gone.

  Still there physically, a brown sandstone lump frozen on the lower steps, with only the barest suggestion of a smile on half-formed lips. Your tears are still there, glistening upon stone. She stares at these.

  She stares at these and sucks in a long hollow breath because suddenly there is nothing, nothing inside her, she has killed her father and she has killed her mother and Schaffa is dying and there is nothing left, nothing, the world just takes and takes and takes from her and leaves nothing—

  But she cannot stop staring at your drying tears.

  Because the world took and took and took from you, too, after all. She knows this. And yet, for some reason that she does not think she’ll ever understand … even as you died, you were reaching for the Moon.

  And for her.

  She screams. Clutches her head in her hands, one of them now halfway stone. Drops to her knees, crushed beneath the weight of grief as if it is an entire planet.

  The onyx, patient but not, aware but indifferent, touches her. She is the only remaining component of the Gate that has a functioning, complementary will. Through this touch she perceives your plan as commands locked and aimed but unfired. Open the Gate, pour the Rifting’s power through it, catch the Moon. End the Seasons. Fix the world. This, Nassun sesses-feels-knows, was your last wish.

  The onyx says, in its ponderous, wordless way: Execute Y/N?

  And in the cold stone silence, alone, Nassun chooses.

  YES

  coda

  me, and you

  YOU ARE DEAD. BUT NOT you.

  The recapture of the Moon is undramatic, from the perspective of the people standing beneath it. At the top of the apartment building where Tonkee and the others have taken shelter, she’s used an ancient writing instrument—long gone dry, but resurrected with a bit of spit and blood at the tip—to try to track the Moon’s movement between one hour and the next. It doesn’t help because she hasn’t observed enough variables to do the math correctly, and because she’s not some rusting hack astronomest, for Earth’s sake. She also isn’t sure if she got the first measurement right because of the fiver or sixer shake that occurred right around that moment, just before Hjarka dragged her away from the window. “Obelisk-builder windows don’t shatter,” she complains afterward.

  “My rusting temper does,” Hjarka retorts, and that ends the argument before it can begin. Tonkee is learning to compromise for the sake of a healthy relationship.

  But the Moon has indeed changed, they see as days and then weeks pass. It does not vanish. It fluxes through shapes and colors in a pattern that does not initially make sense, but it grows no smaller in the sky on successive nights.

  The dismantling of the Obelisk Gate is somewhat more dramatic. Having expended its full capability in the achievement of something just as powerful as Geoarcanity, the Gate proceeds as designed through its shutdown protocol. One by one, the dozens of obelisks floating around the world drift toward Corepoint. One by one, the obelisks—wholly dematerialized now, all quantum states sublimated into potential energy, you need not understand it beyond that—drop into the black chasm. This takes several days.

  The onyx, however, last and greatest of the obelisks, instead drifts out to sea, its hum deepening as its altitude decreases. It enters the sea gently, on a preplanned course to minimize damage—since unlike its fellow obelisks, it alone has retained material existence. This, as the conductors long ago intended, preserves the onyx against future need. It also puts the last remnants of the Niess to rest, finally, deep in a watery grave.

  I suppose we must hope that no intrepid young future orogene ever finds and raises it.

  Tonkee is the one to go and find Nassun. It’s later in the morning, some hours after your death, under a sun that has risen bright and warm in the ashless blue sky. After pausing for a moment to stare at this sky in wonder and longing and fascination, Tonkee goes back to the edge of the hole, and to the pylon stair. Nassun’s still there, sitting on one of the lower steps next to the brown lump of you. Her knees are drawn up, her head bowed, her completely solidified hand—frozen in the splayed gesture that she used while activating the Gate—resting awkwardly on the step beside her.

  Tonkee sits down on your other side, gazing at you for a long moment. Nassun starts and looks up as she becomes aware of another presence, but Tonkee only smiles at her, and awkwardly rests a hand on what was once your hair. Nassun swallows hard, scrubs at the dried tear-tracks on her face, and then nods to Tonkee. They sit together, with you, grieving for a time.

  Danel is the one who goes with Nassun, later, to fetch Schaffa from the dead darkness of Warren. The other Guardians, who still had corestones, have turned to jewel. Most seem to have simply died where they lay, though some fell out of their cells in their thrashing, and their glittering bodies sprawl awkwardly against the wall or along the floor.

  Schaffa alone still lives. He’s disoriented, weak. As Danel and Nassun help him back up into the surface light, it becomes clear that his hacked-off hair is already streaked with gray. Danel’s worried about the stitched wound on the back of his neck, though it has stopped bleeding and seems to cause Schaffa no pain. That isn’t what’s going to kill him.

  Nevertheless. Once he’s capable of standing and the sun has helped to clear his mind somewhat, Schaffa holds Nassun, there beside what remains of you. She doesn’t weep. Mostly she’s just numb. The others come out, Tonkee and Hjarka joining Danel, and they stand with Schaffa and Nassun while the sun sets and the Moon rises again. Maybe it’s a silent memorial service. Maybe they just need time and company to recover from events too vast and strange to comprehend. I don’t know.

  Elsewhere in Corepoint, in a garden long since gone to wild meadow, I and Gaewha face Remwha—Steel, Gray Man, whatever—beneath the now-waning Moon.

  He’s been here since Nassun made her choice. When he finally speaks, I find myself thinking that his voice has become so thin and weary. Once, he made the very stones ripple with the wry, edged humor of his earthtalk. Now he sounds old. Thousands of years of ceaseless existence will do that to a man.

  He says: “I only wanted it to end.”

  Gaewha—Antimony, whatever—says, “That isn’t what we were made for.”

  He turns his head, slowly, to look at her. It is tiring just to watch him do this. Stubborn fool. There is the despair of ages on his face, all because he refuses to a
dmit that there’s more than one way to be human.

  Gaewha offers a hand. “We were made to make the world better.” Her gaze slides to me for support. I sigh inwardly, but offer a hand in truce as well.

  Remwha looks at our hands. Somewhere, perhaps among the others of our kind who have gathered to watch this moment, are Bimniwha and Dushwha and Salewha. They forgot who they were long ago, or else they simply prefer to embrace who they are now. Only we three have retained anything of the past. This is both a good and bad thing.

  “I’m tired,” he admits.

  “A nap might help,” I suggest. “There is the onyx, after all.”

  Well! Something of the old Remwha remains. I don’t think I deserved that look.

  But he takes our hands. Together, the three of us—and the others, too, all who have come to understand that the world has to change, the war must end—descend into the boiling depths.

  The heart of the world is quieter than usual, we find as we take up positions around it. That is a good sign. It does not rage us away at once, which is a better one. We spell out the terms in placatory fluxes of reverberation: The Earth keeps its life-magic, and the rest of us get to keep ours without interference. We have given it back the Moon, and thrown the obelisks in as a surety of good faith. But in exchange, the Seasons must cease.

  There is a period of stillness. I know only later that this is several days. In the moment, it feels like another millennium.

  Then a heavy, lurching jolt of gravitation. Accepted. And—the best sign of all—it sets loose the numberless presences that it has ingested over the past epoch. They spin away, vanishing into the currents of magic, and I don’t know what happens to them beyond that. I won’t ever know what happens to souls after death—or at least, I won’t know for another seven billion years or so, whenever the Earth finally dies.

  An intimidating thing to contemplate. It’s been a challenging first forty thousand years.

  On the other hand … nowhere to go, but up.

  I go back to them, your daughter and your old enemy and your friends, to tell them the news. Somewhat to my surprise, several months have passed in the interim. They’ve settled into the building that Nassun occupied, living off Alabaster’s old garden and the supplies that we brought for him and Nassun. That won’t be enough long term, of course, though they’ve supplemented it admirably with improvised fishing lines and bird-catching traps and dried edible seaweed, which Tonkee seems to have figured out a means of cultivating down at the water’s edge. So resourceful, these modern people. But it is becoming increasingly clear that they’ll have to go back to the Stillness soon, if they want to keep living.

  I find Nassun, who is sitting alone at the pylon again. Your body remains where it fell, but someone has tucked fresh wildflowers into its one remaining hand. There’s another hand beside it, I notice, positioned like an offering near the stump of your arm. It’s too small for you, but she meant well. She doesn’t speak for a long while after I appear, and I find that this pleases me. Her kind talk so much. It goes on for long enough, though, even I get a little impatient.

  I tell her, “You won’t see Steel again.” In case she was worried about that.

  She jerks a little, as if she’s forgotten my presence. Then she sighs. “Tell him I’m sorry. I just … couldn’t.”

  “He understands.”

  She nods. Then: “Schaffa died today.”

  I had forgotten him. I should not have; he was part of you. Still. I say nothing. She seems to prefer that.

  She takes a deep breath. “Will you … The others say you brought them, and Mama. Can you take us back? I know it’ll be dangerous.”

  “There’s no longer any danger.” When she frowns, I explain all of it to her: the truce, the release of hostages, the cessation of immediate hostilities in the form of no more Seasons. It does not mean complete stability. Plate tectonics will be plate tectonics. Season-like disasters will still occur, though with greatly decreased frequency. I conclude: “You can take the vehimal back to the Stillness.”

  She shudders. I belatedly recall what she suffered there. She also says, “I don’t know if I can give it magic. I … I feel like …”

  She lifts the stone-capped stump of her left wrist. I understand, then—and yes, she’s right. She is aligned perfectly, and will be so for the rest of her life. Orogeny is lost to her, forever. Unless she wants to join you.

  I say, “I will power the vehimal. The charge should last six months or so. Leave within that time.”

  I adjust my position then, to the foot of the stairs. She starts, and looks around to find me holding you. I’ve picked up her old hand, too, because our children are always part of us. She stands, and for a moment I fear unpleasantness. But the look on her face is not unhappy. Just resigned.

  I wait, for a moment or a year, to see if she has any final words for your corpse. She says, instead, “I don’t know what will happen to us.”

  “‘Us’?”

  She sighs. “Orogenes.”

  Oh. “The current Season will last for some time, even with the Rifting quelled,” I say. “Surviving it will require cooperation among many kinds of people. Cooperation presents opportunities.”

  She frowns. “Opportunities … for what? You said the Seasons would end after this.”

  “Yes.”

  She holds up her hands, or one hand and one stump, to gesture in frustration. “People killed us and hated us when they needed us. Now we don’t even have that.”

  Us. We. She still thinks of herself as orogene, though she will never again be able to do more than listen to the earth. I decide not to point this out. I do say, however, “And you won’t need them, either.”

  She falls silent, perhaps in confusion. To clarify, I add, “With the end of the Seasons and the death of all the Guardians, it will now be possible for orogenes to conquer or eliminate stills, if they so choose. Previously, neither group could have survived without the other’s aid.”

  Nassun gasps. “That’s horrible!”

  I don’t bother to explain that just because something is horrible does not make it any less true.

  “There won’t be any more Fulcrums,” she says. She looks away, troubled, perhaps remembering her destruction of the Antarctic Fulcrum. “I think … They’re wrong, but I don’t know how else …” She shakes her head.

  I watch her flounder in silence for a month, or a moment. I say, “The Fulcrums are wrong.”

  “What?”

  “Imprisonment of orogenes was never the only option for ensuring the safety of society.” I pause deliberately, and she blinks, perhaps remembering that orogene parents are perfectly capable of raising orogene children without disaster. “Lynching was never the only option. The nodes were never the only option. All of these were choices. Different choices have always been possible.”

  There is such sorrow in her, your little girl. I hope Nassun learns someday that she is not alone in the world. I hope she learns how to hope again.

  She lowers her gaze. “They’re not going to choose anything different.”

  “They will if you make them.”

  She’s wiser than you, and does not balk at the notion of forcing people to be decent to each other. Only the methodology is a problem. “I don’t have any orogeny anymore.”

  “Orogeny,” I say, sharply so she will pay attention, “was never the only way to change the world.”

  She stares. I feel that I have said all I can, so I leave her there to contemplate my words.

  I visit the city’s station, and charge its vehimal with sufficient magic to return to the Stillness. It will still take a journey of months or more for Nassun and her companions to reach Rennanis from the Antarctics. The Season will likely get worse while they travel, because we have a Moon again. Still … they are part of you. I hope they survive.

  Once they’re on their way, I come here, to the heart of the mountain beneath Corepoint. To attend to you.

  There is no one true
way, when we initiate this process. The Earth—for the sake of good relations I will no longer call it Evil—reordered us instantly, and by now many of us are skilled enough to replicate that reordering without a lengthy gestation. I have found that speed produces mixed results, however. Alabaster, as you would call him, may not fully remember himself for centuries—or ever. You, however, must be different.

  I have brought you here, reassembled the raw arcanic substance of your being, and reactivated the lattice that should have preserved the critical essence of who you were. You’ll lose some memory. There is always loss, with change. But I have told you this story, primed what remains of you, to retain as much as possible of who you were.

  Not to force you into a particular shape, mind you. From here on, you may become whomever you wish. It’s just that you need to know where you’ve come from to know where you’re going. Do you understand?

  And if you should decide to leave me … I will endure. I’ve been through worse.

  So I wait. Time passes. A year, a decade, a week. The length of time does not matter, though Gaewha eventually loses interest and leaves to attend her own affairs. I wait. I hope … no. I simply wait.

  And then one day, deep in the fissure where I have put you, the geode splits and hisses open. You rise from its spent halves, the matter of you slowing and cooling to its natural state.

  Beautiful, I think. Locs of roped jasper. Skin of striated ocher marble that suggests laugh lines at eyes and mouth, and stratified layers to your clothing. You watch me, and I watch you back.

  You say, in an echo of the voice you once had, “What is it that you want?”

  “Only to be with you,” I say.

  “Why?”

  I adjust myself to a posture of humility, with head bowed and one hand over my chest. “Because that is how one survives eternity,” I say, “or even a few years. Friends. Family. Moving with them. Moving forward.”